Introductory Hello!

I'd like to welcome you to my first blog ever, and my newest venture in book writing!

Writing was a childhood dream, and I'd often write stories with pencil drawings—the things already written on my mind. So, here, a long time later, practically half a century (yikes!), is the coronation of my first published book. Woohoo! I hope you'll order one, or two or ten and pass them around to your children, your grandkids, your neighbors' kids, and kids who walk past your house on the way to school. (And the kids who skip school too.)

A friend and I were discussing the growing problem of bullying in schools about seven years ago, and the seeds of this book were spawned then. My friend has a son who was picked on in school, not only by some classmates, but by a particular teacher as well. He was a little chubby back then, but a good student, well-mannered, likable. No children deserve unkind treatment. Like any responsible mother, she addressed her concerns for her son, to the teacher, the principal and others, and this problem didn't go away.

She withdrew her son from the school and placed him in another, where he thrived, grew tall, became a handsome man and a successful citizen, and recently happily married. However, not all bullying experiences end like this...there are many tragic endings to a victim of bullying.

The effects of bullying can be devastating to a young person, and I believe educating them about it's destructiveness starts very young—in kindergarten in fact. Awareness can decrease bullying activities in our schools and our society.

I owe this book to Terese and her story, and hundreds of others with similar and even more tragic outcomes because of a bully situation.

Take Sammy and Goliath with you, and learn from them, get intimate with the characters and create your own discussions with those you love. I have some possible suggestions to begin conversations about this topic in the back of the book.